Thursday, July 20, 2006

Quote of the Day

For those bitching about the government funding research, you do understand the irony of posting such a complaint on the internet, right?

Unfortuantely, I'm sure they don't. Or don't care. For anyone apologizing for Bush anymore, it's not about making sense, it's just about defending his decisions at all cost. When you poke enough holes in one argument, they just switch to a different one (see: Iraq War for good examples). Which is why they never even seemed to bother with Bush's excuse for using the veto to "protect human life." Even his followers knew that one was bullshit, so they went straight for the "government shouldn't be funding research, anyway" line. Unfortunately for them, if that's their argument, that ship has sailed. The government does (and should) fund research. There are a lot of good reasons for it, most of them already detailed much better than I could do, so I won't get into it here, but to argue that this veto is good because the government shouldn't be funding research anyway kind of misses a lot of points.

3 comments:

"Telenet (later called Sprintnet), was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dialup access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This network eventually merged with the others in the 1990s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over these pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth. Use of Internet as a phrase to describe a single global TCP/IP" "the Internet is held together by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (for example peering agreements) and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network"source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

Yes the original technology was inspired by a university/military need but it was not until privately funded commercial organizations saw profit in it that it took off and became the household word it is today.

Nice try and you are close but for every close one you find there is one that flopped.

My second point still remains when and where do we stop the funding? Myabe we did invest in something the past but just because we did it in the past does not make it right today.

Hey, storm, I read that same wikipedia article. Normally, I would think you're pretty straight forward, even though I disagree with you, but back up and read the first paragraph under Creation of the internet, and you'll find plenty about government research that led to the part you're talking about.

So you admit that the original technology was funded through government research, and you don't see that that's important? Without that original investment, there would never have been anything for the private companies to see profit it. Are you purposely being difficult, or are you honestly no smart enough to see that? I don't think you're that dumb, so I'll have to say you're deliberately missing the point.

We stop the funding in any number of the much more expensive, much less important way that the government wastes money. If I decide I spend too much money every month, that doesn't mean it's automatically ok for me to stop paying my mortgage. Probably better for me to stop eating out, or not buy a new TV, or something. You don't make the cuts to the important stuff, you make them to the extra unnecessary stuff.

Bill Gates is more responsible for the growth of the internet than Al Gore (period).

A couple of unversity guys thinking about a problem and business guys actually putting the money up to make it work are two totally different things.

As for your previous comment that private industry does not have the funds to research this. Let me ask you a question where does government gets its money from that 's right private industry in fact government is run on a fraction of the money available from private industry. With that money government has to run its other operations therefore government has considerable less resources for research than private industries...your logic is flawed.